Change the World
by Lear's Daughter
Summary: My take on the events leading up to future!Claire's confrontation with future!Peter at the beginning of episode 3x01. Mild spoilers for that episode. No pairings.


Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Heroes.

Claire was startled from a fitful sleep by the slamming of a door somewhere on the first level of the farmhouse.

She splashed some water on her face and pulled her brunette hair back into a ponytail, studiously avoiding looking at herself in the mirror. She was twenty years old now and still didn't look a day over sixteen. Her face was as smooth, free of worry lines or scars.

She felt old. She felt scarred.

She had worn her day clothes to bed, too fatigued even to strip before collapsing into sleep. She smoothed one hand over the tight leather, holstered the gun that she kept under her pillow, tucked away the three knives that lived on her nightstand, and was downstairs less than five minutes after she'd woken.

Hiro Nakamura was in the kitchen cooking eggs. The delightful smell set her stomach to grumbling, and for the first time in a long time she felt a tired smile crease her face.

"Did we rob a grocery store?" she said, taking in the two glasses of milk on the table and the chipped plates.

Hiro smiled, the same innocent smile that he had always had. It was a bit sadder now. "Not a grocery store," he said in nearly unaccented English. "A farm in Missouri."

Claire frowned. "You stole eggs and milk from a farm?"

He looked away guiltily. "Not exactly."

She stared at him a moment longer before her eyes widened in comprehension. With a sigh she walked out of the farmhouse to the dilapidated barn twenty yards away. Shaking her head, she peered inside, unsurprised to find a thin cow and a couple of clucking chickens.

She went back to the kitchen.

"Hiro," she said, in the tone of voice she used to hear from her mother whenever she'd done something wrong.

"I know," he sighed. "No settling down."

He was scooping eggs onto her plate as he said it, though, and she found that she couldn't stay annoyed at him.

"You know we have to leave here soon," she said, reaching across the table to touch his hand as he sat to eat. "We've been here too long already."

"We have to wait for Alex and Jenny," he said stubbornly, nibbling at his eggs. "They're coming."

"They were supposed to be here four days ago, Hiro," Claire said, biting her lip. "You know that they're—"

"Don't say it," he said. "Don't, Claire. I understand what might have happened. But we have to have _hope_."

Hope. Claire tried to remember what that was. Hope was what a sixteen year old cheerleader had felt when she'd met her personal hero, Peter Petrelli. Hope was what her family had felt when they'd moved to Costa Verde, certain that they could stay under the radar this time. Hope was what Matt Parkman had felt when she and Hiro had rescued him from one of the camps. Hope was what she had lost when Nathan Petrelli had been the first "special" person to be executed for what he was, when Peter had become a sad mockery of himself, when Ando had been cut down by his own kind for helping the specials. When she had been captured and taken to a camp and tortured for weeks before Hiro and Peter could rescue her.

"Peter came by while you were sleeping," Hiro said.

"Peter's going to get us all killed," she muttered.

"He means well, you know."

"You didn't tell him anything, did you?" she demanded, eyes narrowed. "He's betrayed us once, Hiro. We can't trust him."

"I know," Hiro said. "It's just…hard. Peter used to be a hero."

"And now he's living in a dream world," Claire snapped. She shook her head. They'd had this conversation too many times. It never went anywhere new.

They were interrupted by loud pounding at the door. In an instant Claire was on her feet, gun in hand.

"Get Molly," she told Hiro. "If you hear me give the signal, take her to the new safe house. If you can, come back for me."

"What's the signal?"

"Gunshots."

He nodded briefly before teleporting upstairs. Claire strode smoothly toward the door, every muscle tense, ready.

She reached for the doorknob, weapon aimed forward. She pulled the door open with a jerk.

And sighed.

"You're late," she said curtly.

Alex, a middle aged man who could see through any solid object, grimaced. He and his partner, Jenny, a teenager who could phase through objects much like DL had been able to do, had another man slumped over their shoulders. The man was thin and trembling, unconscious or nearly so.

"We ran into some complications," Alex said tightly. "Claire, I think they've tagged him."

Her nostrils flared as she stepped forward, pulling up the man's head and searching for the bump on his neck where a tracer would be. It was there, all right.

She swore. "Hiro, get down here!" she shouted. "Bring Molly!"

They appeared almost instantly. Molly looked tense but not as afraid as she should have been. She looked up to Claire as a mother or older sister and believed that she could do no wrong.

"Hiro, take Molly to the safe house and then come back for the rest of us. I'll stall the feds for as long as I can. Come back for me last."

He nodded, took Molly's hand, and blinked out of sight. Claire always finished her orders like that. "Do this, do that, and come back for me at the end." She'd been left behind once, through no real fault of anyone's, and she'd paid the price for it in blood and pain and torment. Even though she knew Hiro would never let her down, not if he could help it, she couldn't help but beg him not to.

"Have Hiro take him last," she told Jenny and Alex, gesturing to the unconscious man.

"But—" Jenny said.

Claire interrupted. "You're more valuable to us than he is. Don't worry. We'll all get out of here."

She could hear the squeal of tires now, and, grabbing a sniper rifle and shotgun from beside the door, hurried outside to see the feds zooming toward them in four black vans. She laid the shotgun on the porch and then took careful aim with the sniper rifle. Her breathing was steady. Her hands didn't shake.

Her finger twitched on the trigger and the head of one of the drivers exploded. His car swerved into the one beside it, crashing them together in a heap of twisted metal and broken glass. The other two kept on coming. Her next shot took out a tire, but the driver got the van under control enough to stop rather than roll over, and the men came pouring out of the van in their thick bullet-proof vests and helmets. She was just taking aim at the last van when she heard the ominous throbbing of a helicopter.

"Hiro, where are you," she muttered, dropping one of the men from the crippled vehicle with a shot to the neck.

She needed to keep them away from the house, in case the others were still trapped inside. Dropping the sniper rifle and taking up the shotgun, she sprinted forward until she was in the wide, flat stretch of dirt leading up to the house. She pumped the shotgun and took out a fed; pumped again and shot fruitlessly at the helicopter, from which a whole group of feds was descending.

It didn't take her long to be completely surrounded.

Someone blinked into existence beside her, and she turned in relief only to discover that it was not who she hoped it was.

"Go away, Peter," she yelled. "This isn't your fight."

"The hell it isn't," he shouted back, the scar on his face making him seem almost threatening. "I'm here to save you, Claire. That's what I do, remember? Save the cheerleader, save the world."

"I'm not a cheerleader any more, and you're not my hero," she reminded him. "This world can't be saved."

"Lay down your weapons!" one of the feds shouted at them. They were surrounded on all sides, with about twenty guns pointed in their direction.

Peter put his hand on her shoulder. "Just tell me where the safe house is. I'll take us there," he said intently, so much like the man she remembered that she yearned to give in, to let her protect her just this once. It had been a long time since she had been the one being taken care of.

Then she remembered what he'd done, the man he'd become in the years since Nathan had exposed them to the world, and she shrugged his hand off her shoulder. "I'll die before I tell you where the safe house is," she snarled, turning her glare back on the surrounding feds.

One of the feds, a nervous kid who probably didn't know what he was doing, got overanxious and fired a shot before the order was given. The bullet smacked into her arm, but even though it hurt lot the pain was fleeting, and within moments her body expelled the bullet and sealed itself back up. She'd only gotten to be more durable as time went on. She wasn't even sure that a shot to the head would kill her these days.

The feds were just about to give the order to open fire when yet another person popped into being beside her, and this time Claire did sigh in relief to see Hiro.

"Claire, it is time to go," Hiro said. "Oh, Peter! Are you coming with us?"

"No," Claire said at the same time as Peter said, "Yes."

"You know I can find you," Peter said. "I've got Molly's gift."

"Yeah, well, we don't have to make it easy on you," Claire bit back. "Let's go, Hiro."

By the time Peter opened his mouth to protest again, they were gone.

The new safe house was many miles from the old one, and maybe Claire would have told Peter where it was, if she hadn't known that Micah was there also. She knew that she'd done the right thing when the teenager pounced at her the minute she appeared in the warehouse and pulled her into a tight hug.

"I was afraid Hiro would be too late," he said.

"I'm okay," Claire said. "You know you don't have to worry about me, Micah. I'm indestructible, remember?"

"You heal quickly," Micah said, too smart for his own good. "That's not the same thing."

Claire smiled softly and put her hand on his shoulder. She looked over his shoulder to see Mohinder and Matt.

"Peter was there," she told them, feeling Micah tense beneath her hand.

"Going on about fixing the past again?" Matt said, the fury in his eyes reminding her that she wasn't the only one who didn't trust him any more.

"Today it was just all about wanting to help us," Claire replied. "He's going to come looking for us."

"If he does that, he'll find us," Mohinder said. He hesitated. "I still think that we should give him a second chance. With his help we could be much more effective in protecting the others."

"We can't trust him!" Micah said, his voice high and frightened. "Have you forgotten what he did to me?"

Mohinder looked down. "Of course I haven't forgotten," he said quietly. "I'm sorry, Micah. You're right."

"I promise," Claire said, "I'll kill him myself before I let him hurt anyone again."

Matt didn't look reassured by that promise, and she heard his voice in her head, a whisper against her thoughts. _None of us would ask you to do that, Claire. Not even Micah_.

She thought back: _I know. That's why I have to be the one to do it._

They got settled into the new safe house quickly before everyone assembled in the living room. There were quite a few of them there. Claire knew all of their names, but for a number of them she wasn't sure which face went with which name. She was largely responsible for helping to rescue all of them, yet they were all beginning to blur together in her mind.

"I'd like to welcome everyone who is new here," she began, standing at the head of the table and briefly making eye contact with Matt, Mohinder, Hiro, Molly, and Micah—the only ones left from the early days, when they had first banded together. At least, the only ones left whom she could trust. The rest were all rescuees, the ones that her people have risked life and limb to break out of the detention centers and camps that had sprung up all over the country. "You have two options before you. There's a place out west, a safe zone, whose location is only known to two people in this room and the people who live there. It's a small but growing environment where you will be safe—or at least as safe as it is possible for you to be. If you choose to join the colony, Hiro will take you there and I will wish you luck for the future."

"You have another option," she continued. "You can stay with us and help us fight. As you know, our organization is able to rescue six or seven mutants a month. I understand that this option won't be for most of you. We are never safe, always on the run, and we are the number one target for both the feds and the company. You have no obligation to do this. Don't decide now. Go away and think about it. I'll need your answers by tomorrow morning."

They filed out of the room, the veterans to begin planning their next strike and the rescuees to ponder their options. Claire didn't think any of these would choose to stay and fight. And why would they, when the other alternative was so much better?

Once she was alone, Claire sat, elbows on the table and head in her hands. "You can come out now, Peter," she muttered. She expected him to appear in front of her and was surprised to feel his strong hands on her shoulders, massaging.

"You look so tired," he murmured.

For a minute she allowed herself to daydream, to imagine that this was four years ago and he was still her uncle Peter—her hero. The dream couldn't last long, though. She had spent precious little time with Peter before the world went to hell, and most of her real memories of him involved a mixture of bittersweet sentimentality and bitter anger.

"I haven't had a good night's sleep in years," she replied, shrugging off his touch. She turned to face him and found that he, too, looked tired. Not just tired, but weak. Like a puppy that's been kicked one too many times.

Peter had spent too much time trying to save the world to remember to save himself. Even that had been okay, once upon a time, until he had forgotten that saving the world meant taking it as it was, rather than always harping on the past. She could have forgiven him just about anything, but leaving Micah unprotected as he went off to chase down a lead on how to fix the past, when he knew the feds were closing in, was too much. It didn't make her love him any less, but it made him untrustworthy and that was almost work.

"Do you need a place to sleep tonight?" she asked, unable even to summon up a sense of pity any more. She was annoyed by his weakness, but too weak herself to turn him away when he was in this state.

He ran a hand tiredly through his hair, the hair that he had never grown back to its former length after Elle cut it so long ago.

"That would be...kind," he said.

She sighed, nodded. Stood and let him lean on her as she led him up the stairs to her room. The bed was a double and she helped him to lie on the left side.

She turned to go—they could use her help in the war room—but he said, "Stay with me?" and, like a sap, she did. She sat on the bed beside him, carding her hand through his hair. There was a time, she reflected, when she had had such a crush on him—before she'd known he was her uncle, of course, though her feelings had lingered a bit even after that revelation. What was he to her now? She didn't know.

"Why, Peter?" she whispered, not sure whether he was even still awake. "Why did you stop being my hero?"

"I am going to fix it," he whispered back. "I swear, Claire. I will. I just need more time."

"It's been four years," she said, taking her hand away, irritated once more. "You've had all the time you could need to go back, but you can't. We both know you can't. You can't kill Nathan. It's not a failing, Peter. The failing is not living in the present."

"I should be able to," Peter said. "Nathan's dead anyway, isn't he? What difference is it if I'm the one who does it?" He paused. "Could you do it, Claire? Could you kill Nathan? Could you kill me?"

She didn't pause to think. She'd figured out the answer in her head enough times already. "Yes."

His lips curved in a parody of a smile. "You're stronger than I am."

She didn't respond to that. They both knew it was true.

"What would it take, for you to get the strength to go back and actually do what needs doing?" she asked, finding a strange sort of peace in the first real conversation they'd had in months.

"If I ever felt like I lost you completely," Peter said, turning onto his side and opening his eyes sleepily to take in her youthful face. "If I ever felt like I lost you completely, I'd do anything to change that."

She didn't reassure him. She patted him gently on the arm, then went downstairs to join the others in the war room. When she came back upstairs hours later Peter was soundly asleep. She lay on the bed next to him and stared at the ceiling for a long time before sleep claimed her.

When she woke Peter was gone. She went downstairs and all eight of the rescuees asked to be taken to the colony.

Two months later she sent Peter a message, to an e-mail account she knew he checked frequently—because he stupidly still trusted her. She told him that she needed his help, that she would meet him at a group of warehouses they had spent some time in a long time ago, when everything had first gone wrong.

She wouldn't be doing this, if he had just stayed out of their way. But no. He was too dedicated to finding a way to fix everything that would not involve killing Nathan—to find some solution in which Nathan would live and everything would be perfect. And in his search he had interrupted a rescue op, had gotten Matt caught by the company. God knew what they were doing to him right now. Matt didn't deserve this. None of them did.

"Ask it to go on a time delay," she told Micah, holding out the dormant tracker they'd extracted from one of the recent rescuees. The feds and company liked to tag their victims.

He put his hand over the small device, hesitated. "You don't have to do this, you know," he said, though the words clearly pained him. "Not for me." When Peter had left Micah, had allowed the boy to be captured, Micah had been used and abused by the company, forced to commit less moral acts than rigging an election. He had been forced to see the terrible things done to his fellow "specials." It had taken him years to recover.

"I'm doing what needs to be done," she said. "Please, Micah…this is hard enough. Do it for me?"

Sighing heavily, he focused on the device for a moment before pulling away. "It's done. It should go off in three minutes."

She nodded. "Hiro?"

Looking uncharacteristically grim, Hiro took her by the arm and teleported her to the warehouse complex. "Are you sure that you want to stay here alone?" he said. "I could stay with you."

She was tempted, but shook her head. "Thank you, Hiro," she said. "He won't hurt me. I need to do this alone."

He bit his lip, teleported away. She gently set the tracker on the ground, then walked away, taking the long path to the nearest open door, her gun a heavy weight at her side.

She walked inside, took out the gun, and settled in to wait. If she'd timed it right, Peter would arrive at the same time as the feds. He wouldn't teleport away, though; he'd be too sure that she was here somewhere, that she needed saving, and he would come looking for her.

She didn't have to wait long. Less than an hour later she heard the sound of gun fire, and then silence for a long while, and then the pounding of boots against the pavement as he neared. She pictured his handsome, scarred face, and she brought up the hand that held her gun. Her heart pounded in her ears.

He burst through the door, facing away from her. She cocked the gun.

He stiffened, but she knew that he knew who she was. "Come on Claire, it's me," he said softly, turning to face her. "Put down the gun."

"Can't," she said, stepping forward, steely determination in her voice and stride. She couldn't let him see her tremble, even for an instant. "It ends here."

"Wait!" he shouted, holding up his hand. "Think about it. Claire, it wouldn't be like this if they'd never known about us. No camps. No experiments. No hiding underground hunted like this. All these powers—it's going to destroy everything."

"I made peace with that a long time ago," she snarled, furious because he had waited until now to be so like the Peter that she remembered. Furious about what he was forcing her to do. "You never did."

"What happened to you, Claire? How did you get to this place?"

"I'm different, remember? Special." She spat the word out like it was something foul.

"I can fix all of this, everything. Please."

She hesitated, her guilt getting to her for a moment despite the knowledge that this was her only choice. It wasn't as though she could kill him like this anyway. If she wanted to do that, she'd take two steps closer to him and put the tip of the gun on his forehead. He'd let her, of course he would, and even he couldn't stop time quickly enough to dodge at that range or regenerate once the bullet pierced his brain. Probably.

Her resolve hardened again, she stared him in the eye. _You've lost me, you fool. Do what you said you'd do_, she thought, but not too loudly—not loudly enough for him to inadvertently hear with his borrowed telepathy. "Sorry, Peter. I always loved you."

Her finger twitched on the trigger, and suddenly Peter was gone, and her gun with him.

"Good luck," she whispered, her hand dropping to her side. She sat down, resting against the wall, and waited. Waited for Hiro to come pick her up. Waited for this world to disappear, for this version of herself to be destroyed, in favor of a better one.


End file.
